Teaching Sexism in the University

In the time of #MeToo and #TimesUp, many of us are reflecting on our own experiences. For me, I’ve been fortunate to not have been sexually assaulted or raped. However, I am far from free of experiences. There was the man who rubbed his junk against my leg when I was younger to watch me turn bright red, the man who told me “I shouldn’t be so picky for someone in my weight class” when I said I didn’t want to have him over to my apartment, or more recently, the workplace that was full of sexism and gender discrimination. I want to focus on the workplace piece. Unknowingly to me before I accepted the job, one of the universities where I worked was/is incredibly sexist, or should I say, the administration allows sexism to occur. The female president shattered glass ceilings as she rose up in her career field and I applaud her for that. But that does not mean that everyone who works in her organization should have to go through those experiences or that the way it has been is ok to continue. If ever I saw a good ole’ boys club, this was a place it existed. To the point that one of my male colleagues mentioned he thought about gender on a daily basis because of how much privilege and access he received. In one meeting he said he noticed that he never had to restate himself or defend his comments. Yet, he saw this regularly with his female colleagues. In another meeting, I watched one assistant vice president (male) come unprepared and ask for another assistant vice president’s prepared notes (female) to then give the presentation as his own. Did anything happen? No…except for the women in the room completely noticing what happened, feeling incredibly uncomfortable, but only slightly surprised based on our own experiences with this manager in our organization.

My experience was significantly better than other female colleagues, but it drove me to resign. The fear of going to work to be yelled at, demeaned, criticized, and have credit stolen for my work, drove me to cry daily, drink excessively in the evenings, and gain 60 pounds over 18 months. Several months after leaving that experience, I found myself starting to return to my normal self with laughter, smiles, and normal alcohol/food consumption. Yet even several months after, I still experienced post-traumatic stress. Talking about trauma-informed care at work or discussing working with survivors of sexual misconduct and harassment in the workplace caused me to bring up every piece of professionalism I had to not lose my composure in a meeting. While employed at the former workplace, I filed a complaint with human resources for sex discrimination. Unfortunately, while they said they investigated it, they blamed the wrong person and overall dismissed the complaint. What about my colleague who also filed a similar complaint? Nothing. They said they resolved it with my case. Not shocking that discrimination and bullying are extremely hard to prove and in the “women need to be tougher” era of Trump, the EEOC dismissed my claim.

I’m not going to name names or companies. But I do want to see change happen. I worked at a university who is training young people to go into the workforce. I dealt with rampant sexism where mediocre to incompetent cisgender men were rewarded and cisgender women/non-gender conforming folx were told to be quiet, stay in their place, and not challenge. In that was the implied, make those above you look good and do whatever they asked. In an organization that was 75% men in a field that is typically female-dominated, that meant you were probably supporting a man. For me, I had a male boss, his boss was male, his boss was male, and the president was female. Seemingly, I wasn’t that far from the top, but it was all male to get there and, in that organization, I had been scolded twice about going outside the hierarchy, even for a conversation that was a mentoring question. In the women-supporting spaces where I am involved, we talk about being the one and the only in a department or on a team. We talk about sexism in the workplace and gender inequality. But how can we expect change to happen if new graduates are seeing this behavior and culture in their universities? If they’re being taught before they enter the work world that this is how it works? Change needs to occur and how can it happen in workplaces if colleges and universities are failing in their co-curricular teaching? I don’t have the answers, but there needs to be more awareness of sexism in the university workplace not only for those who are on the receiving end of that behavior but also to stop modeling to college students the opposite of what we are fighting for post-graduation.